Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia

475 Pages·1999·4.45 MB·English

by  Michael Asher

PENGUIN BOOKS
LAWRENCE
‘Asher probably gets nearer to the truth about him than any of his
previous biographers… By the end of this conscientiously researched
book, the more impressive for Asher’s knowledge of the Bedu tribes, one
is left wondering whether he regrets the journey he has made to prove
his childhood hero to be somewhat flawed’ Simon Courtauld, Spectator
‘This excellent biography is in part a pilgrimage, performed by an
admirer with a felicitous blend of reverence and wry scepticism and a
marvellous ability to convey a sense of place’ Lawrence James, Literary
Review
‘Asher has written a book about his childhood hero that is thoughtful
and balanced… Moreover he reaches a conclusion about Lawrence that
encompasses all other biographies, one that takes the ground out from
under the never-ending controversy about probably the best-known
Englishman, after Winston Churchill, this century’ Phillip Knightley, Mail
on Sunday
‘This may well emerge as the best biography currently available’
Contemporary Review
‘He writes well and has new things to say – not an easy thing in this
desperately overcrowded field. His life of “the Uncrowned King of
Arabia” has the balance that Aldington’s polemic so lamentably failed to
provide’ Robert Irwin, London Review of Books
‘Asher himself, a former SAS man, is one of the greatest living desert
explorers. Unlike other biographers, he gains his insights not only
through the dust of libraries, but through the dazzling light of the
dunes… what follows is… a careful exploration, stripping away myth
(while avoiding crass revisionism), gazing into the complexity beneath a
legend’ Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Asher has served in the Parachute Regiment and the SAS, and
studied English at the University of Leeds. He has made expeditions in
many countries, always preferring to travel on foot or with animal
transport. He lived for three years with a Bedu tribe totally unaffected
by the outside world and, with his wife, Arabist and photographer
Mariantonietta Peru, made the first west-east crossing of the Sahara on
foot with camels – a distance of 4,500 miles – without technology or
back-up of any kind. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,
and has won both the Ness Award of the Royal Geographical Society and
the Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for
Exploration. In 1997 he and Mariantonietta Peru presented the
documentary In Search of Lawrence for Channel 4, which was watched by
2.4 million people. Michael Asher has travelled a total of 16,000 miles
by camel and is the author of eight books. Of these, Penguin also publish
Shoot to Kill: A Soldier’s Journey through Violence, Thesiger: A Biography
and The Last of the Bedu: In Search of the Myth.
LAWRENCE
The Uncrowned King of Arabia
Michael Asher
With colour photographs by Mariantonietta Peru
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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www.penguin.com
First published by Viking 1998
Published in Penguin Books 1999
12
Copyright © Michael Asher, 1998
Colour photographs copyright © Mariantonietta Peru, 1998
Maps copyright © Reg and Marjorie Piggott, 1998
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser
ISBN:978-0-14-191009-3
For Mariantonietta
Arian Hok Buda
‘The story I have to tell is one of the most splendid ever given to a man
for telling.’
T. E. Lawrence to Vyvyan Richards
‘Il faut souffrir pour être content.’
T. E. Lawrence to Charlotte Shaw
CONTENTS
List of Plates
List of Maps
Introduction: The Valley of the Moon
: THE WANDERER, 1888–1916
PART ONE
1. Apparent Queen Unveiled Her Peerless Light
2. Dominus Illuminatio Mea
3. Nothing Which Qualified Him to be an Ordinary Member of Society
4. The Sultan Drank Tea as Usual
5. A Rather Remarkable Young Man
6. Mr Hogarth is Going Digging
7. The Baron in the Feudal System
8. Peace in Mesopotamia Such as Has Not Been Seen for Generations
9. The Insurance People Have Nailed Me Down
10. Cairo is Unutterable Things
: THE WARRIOR, 1916–1918
PART TWO
11. The Biggest Thing in the Near East Since 1550
12. Fallen Like a Sword into Their Midst
13. Not an Army But a World is Moving upon Wejh
14. I Do Not Suppose Any Englishman Before Ever Had Such a Place
15. It is Not Known What are the Present Whereabouts of Captain
Lawrence
16. An Amateurish Buffalo-Billy Sort of Performance
17. Ahmad ibn Baqr, a Circassian from Qunaytra
18. The Most Ghastly Material to Build into a Design
19. My Dreams Puffed out Like Candles in the Strong Wind of Success
: THE MAGICIAN, 1918–1935
PART THREE
20. Colonel Lawrence Still Goes on; Only I Have Stepped Out of the
Way
21. In Speed We Hurl Ourselves Beyond the Body
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Text
Bibliography
Index
LIST OF PLATES
COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS
Photography by Mariantonietta Peru
1. Lawrence’s Spring, Jordan
2. Pharaoh’s Island, off Sinai
3. Ruins of a traditional house, Yanbu’, Saudi Arabia 4. Ruins of mud
houses, Hamra village, Saudi Arabia 5. Fallen locomotive, Hediyya
station, Saudi Arabia 6. Hediyya bridge
7. Guweira plain from the Nagb ash-Shtar pass, Jordan 8. Atwi
station, Jordan
9. Tent in the Wadi Rum, Jordan
10. Howaytat woman, Wadi Rum
11. The author with Sabah ibn ‘Iid at Mudowwara well, Jordan 12.
Loading a camel, Mudowwara well, Jordan 13. Wrecked railway
wagon, Mudowwara 14. Bedui filling a waterskin
15. Bedui of the Haywat, Jordan
BLACK AND WHITE
1. T. E. Lawrence aged about ten or eleven, a studio photograph in
Oxford, c. 1900
2. Sarah Lawrence with her children, in the porch of their home at
Fawley, c. 1894
3. The City of Oxford High School for Boys. Lawrence surrounded by
his form mates and their teacher, c. 1900
4. Portrait of Gray by Henry Scott Tuke 5. In the summer of 1909
Lawrence visited Kala’at al-Husn (Crak des Chevaliers) 6. The castle
of Sahyun 7. The Norman keep at Safita, and Harran 8. Lawrence
with Leonard Woolley at Carchemish 9. Carchemish
10. Salim Ahmad, nicknamed Dahoum, and Sheikh Hammoudi at
Carchemish, 1911
11. Workmen at Carchemish, 1911
12. Lawrence in Arab dress
13. Lieut-Col. Stewart Newcombe, Royal Engineers 14. Camels, as
ridden by Lawrence 15. Sharif ‘Abdallah and Ronald Storrs at
Jeddah, October 1916
16. Sharif Feisal’s army falling back on Yanbu’ on the coast of the Red
Sea, December 1916
17. Feisal’s camp at dawn, December 1916
18 and 19. Feisal and his army captured Wejh in January 1917 and
made it their headquarters for the next six months 20. Auda Abu
Tayyi and his kinsmen, photographed by Lawrence in May 1917
21. Auda and Sharif Nasir at Wadi Sirhan, June 1917
22. Mohammad adh-Dhaylan with other Howaytat tribesmen 23. A
Turkish patrol repairing a stretch of railway track near Ma’an 24.
The bridge at Tel ash-Shehab 25. Nasib al-Bakri, one of the
founders of the Arab Revolt 26. Dakhilallah al-Qadi, hereditary
law-giver of the Juhayna 27. The capture of Aqaba, 6 July 1917,
photographed by Lawrence 28. Aqaba fort from inland
29. The interior of Aqaba fort
30. Ja’afar Pasha, Feisal and Pierce Joyce at Wadi Quntilla, August
1917
31. Nuri as-Sa’id
32. The gate tower at Azraq
33. Turkish prisoners near Tafilah fort, January 1918
34. Sharif Zayd and other Arab leaders with captured Austrian guns at
Tafilah 35. Lawrence at the army headquarters in Cairo, 1918
36. General Allenby stepping out of his armoured car in Damascus, 3
October 1918
37. The Hejaz Camel Corps rounding up Bedouin pillagers after the
capture of Damascus, 2 October 1918
38. Lawrence by Augustus John, 1919
39. Feisal, photographed at the same time 40. Gertrude Bell, Sir
Herbert Samuel, Lawrence and Sharif ‘Abdallah in 41. Amman,
April 1921